Archive for category Fifty Shades Of Grey

Sex sells, and I’m buying! I have a confession to make that shames me. I have never read 50 Shades of Grey. It just got so mainstream and the ‘done thing’ to do. I couldn’t even tell you what its about. However, I am very acquainted with classic erotic literature which has long been a passion of mine for years.

Erotica has been around for centuries – from the bawdiness of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (beautifully brought to life in Pasolini’s cinematic version of the work) right up to feminist neurotica erotica novel Fear of Flying. And a lot of us have had a gander at it over the years. Has it made corrupt perverts out of us? We will be discreet about that issue and take up our prime positions for filth mongering at 10 classic works of erotic fiction…

10. Candy – Terry Southern

18 years old Candy Christian is a highly attractive but innocent girl who gets into all sorts of unintended sexual sprockles with men who only seek to possess her. Her philosophy professor tries to seduce her. Then she tries to have sex with the gardener whom her father attacks upon stumbling across them. Her father ends up with a fractured skull and in the hospital, his twin brother Jack and his Jack’s libertine wife come to visit, when the wife leaves, Jack tries to rape Candy. A nurse comes in to break it up but Candy flees and ends up in Dr Krankeit’s office. He is an authority on masturbation…

Going to work one morning, Candy happens to meet a perverted hunchback and thinking he is a performance artist, invites him back to her flat. She is propositioned by school mates and a gynaecologist overhears this and gives her an impromptu examination in the toilets. There is more sexual misfortune in store for Candy when the cafe is raided, she is sent to the camp of a peace activist, is talked into having sex with a wannabe Guru, has a pregnancy scare and ends up in India as part of her spiritual development only to be raped by her father.

Written by Maxwell Kenton (pseudonym for Terry Southern) along with Mason Hoffenberg, for dirty book publisher Olympia, Both authors cheerfully admit that they did it for the money and they thought it was ‘vomit in the gutter’. They couldn’t understand why everyone was taking it so seriously. In 2006, Playboy rated Candy as one of the top 25 sexiest books. Packed to the gills with sex, Candy (interpreted by many as a female satire on Voltaire’s Candide) is funny, interesting and outrageous. It is also extremely raunchy and perverse. A gem of gutter literature!

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